Christian Horner simply shook his head as he watched Sergio Perez spin off the Silverstone track and out of British Grand Prix qualifying.
Perez is under pressure again despite only having signed a new Red Bull contract a few weeks ago. Rumours emerged in the Silverstone paddock that the team may be preparing to replace the underperfoming Mexican with Daniel Ricciardo if results don't improve.
So the last thing Perez needed was to spin off the track and get his car stuck in the gravel. But that's exactly what he did after changing onto soft tyres but not finding the grip he hoped for at Copse Corner.
And Ricciardo just happened to be the one behind him on track and had a front row seat to the incident. Perez could only report over the radio: "I'm stuck," before asking if he could be pushed back onto the tarmac.
But, as his race engineer Hugh Bird pointed out, drivers who receive assistance to get back on track are not allowed to take any further part in the session. He he had to hope that not enough drivers would go faster than his time after the brief red flag period that followed his incident.
But by the end of Q1 he had slipped to the bottom of the timesheets and was condemned to start towards the back of the grid. Ricciardo, meanwhile, made it comfortably through to Q2 in the inferior sister RB car.
In Perez's defence, he was far from the only one who lost control at Copse on the damp track. His team-mate Max Verstappen did very well to keep the other Red Bull out of the barrier as he took a trip across the barrel, but managed to keep moving so he did not get stuck. Kevin Magnussen also managed to avoid crashing his Haas as he too went off the track.
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The Dutchman was only 11th fastest, though it was enough to make it through to Q2. Joining him in that second part of qualifying were Logan Sargeant and Zhou Guanyu, both of whom have poor records on a Saturday in their F1 career but who managed to deliver in the tricky SIlverstone conditions.
Pierre Gasly was the only driver who did not manage a better time than Perez. But he was always going to be starting from the back of the grid anyway after taking several new engine components beyond his annual allowance which totalled a 50-place grid penalty.
His team-mate Esteban Ocon was furious to have only gone 18th fastest as Alpine suffered a double Q1 exit. Magnussen and Valtteri Bottas were the other two drivers in the bottom five, though Haas and Sauber did at least manage to get one car each through to Q2.